Artists — Field Notes — craig davidson

**Marfa, Texas** :: Image – Google Earth

I’ve never been to Texas. My wife has visited Texas a few times, her parents lived there decades ago, our daughter has a good friend outside Dallas, and I know someone who spends half the year somewhere in the state. I’ve only heard stories about it, or watched movies and television shows based there. I’ve seen a lot of images over the years too, horrifying and soothing. I’ve read articles about Austin, and I used to watch Austin City Limits frequently. When I see pictures of Marfa’s main streets though, it feels like a bunch of small Montana towns I know — Dutton, Havre, and Big Timber — some with a few hundred people, and some with a couple of thousand.

I was listening to a podcast and the show’s celebrity guest mentioned Marfa, Texas. He’d been there recently and spoke about how much it’s changed from when he visited a few decades ago. It’s become a remote outpost for artists and galleries, initiated by Donald Judd in the 1970’s, who moved in and shifted its energy. Even with that kind of contemporary change, I still wonder how anything can be sustained in towns that size. Then I remember that most small towns didn’t begin because of retail opportunities for the residents, or tourists like me, unless they have a Corn Palace, or a giant truck stop near the highway. They exist because it’s a place for the people who live nearby to drop off crops, buy propane, and replenish their water supply — they’re literal weigh stations. If you look to the edges of the towns, there’s usually a cluster of silos, and depending on the size, maybe even a few clusters of silos. Sometimes the smallest towns only include a hardware store, a small tavern, maybe a cafe, and a couple of gas pumps. If it’s larger, there might be a post office, a bank, a courthouse, a Chinese, or Mexican restaurant, with surprisingly great food, and an insurance agent who occupies a vacant storefront one day a week because they travel from town to town.

If a local farmer, or rancher, drives through and decides to see if anybody they know is there, they rarely need to go inside anywhere to check who’s there. They know just by identifying the trucks parked out front. People often work alone when they live in isolated places like this, so conversation is welcome, even craved sometimes. You might see two trucks parked in the middle of main street next to each other, facing opposite directions, without their engines running, while the occupants talk. Conversations that last awhile and typically revolve around the weather, commodity prices, their families, and updates on the repairs each of them has been making to their equipment. It’s hard to keep everything that’s on their minds to themselves. It’s hard for their spouse, or their kids too, to be burdened with the same worries and frustrations day after day, so, they drive through town looking for others to talk with.

So, I can imagine what Marfa might feel like without visiting it. The air might be thicker and smell different than in Dutton. The color of the soil might differ, construction materials and building silhouettes might be different too because it’s Texas, not Montana. Except for all of the painted stars, cement stars attached to exterior walls, and forged steel stars hanging from mobiles around Marfa, I think its heartbeat is just like Dutton’s.

Songs :: Transcendental Blues by Steve Earle, Out of Touch by Hall and Oates, My Hometown by Bruce Springsteen, All My Days by Alexi Murdoch, and On The Nature Of Daylight by Max Richter

Hollyhocks :: Photographer Unknown — **Hollyhocks** :: Photographer Unknown

We used to have some elderly neighbors that lived three houses south of us on the same side of the street — Susie and Lavi. They were a little shy, mostly kept to themselves but were always very warm whenever we interacted. They’d lived in their house for many years before we moved onto the block and for many years after. Their house was a modest single story one-bedroom home painted mint green with white trim and a detached two car garage that was slightly bigger than their house. Their backyard was filled with a large, luscious vegetable garden, a lot of flowers and an elevated deck attached to the rear of their house where you’d often see them sitting, sunning and sipping refreshments.

After two years of waving to each other and exchanging pleasantries, one early fall day they invited me to stop by their house. “We want to show you something.” Later that afternoon I knocked on their front door and both of them greeted me. I stepped in and after we had a brief conversation, I slowly scanned their living room in awe. It looked like a combination of a folk-art museum and a children’s playhouse. There was a shelf about six feet off the floor on three sides of the room filled with beautiful cookie jars and other colorful collectibles, and on the floor lining the same three walls, were large wooden doll houses — each was unique and about the same size. There were at least ten or twelve of them visible. Each one had two to three floors, with highly detailed exterior treatments, like multi pane windows, shutters, window boxes with flowers, hand cut cedar roof shingles and detailed paint jobs. The interiors were completely furnished with things like lamps, chairs, tables, magazine racks complete with miniature magazines, throw rugs, bathroom fixtures, including small toothbrushes and even a mounted roll of toilet tissue, and kitchen fixtures like countertop appliances, cups, plates, silverware, tablecloths, and house plants throughout. Everything was hand crafted in exquisite detail. The front panel of each house was removable so you could view and interact with the entire interior. They explained that they had crafted the houses from scratch over decades and had hand painted almost all of the cookie jars and other collectibles. Lavi and Susie had a secret. They were under the radar artists and artisans, and they were making magical things.

I commented on how amazing everything was and asked them a bunch of questions including why they wanted to show me all of this. Before answering Susie made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody what I saw besides my wife. I told her I wouldn’t. They worried about people knowing what they had in their house. Then she told me that they wanted our daughter to have one of the houses if that was OK — that she should come by with us and pick one out sometime soon. Eventually we did go to their house together and she did choose one.

Early the following spring, I saw Lavi walking from his house to his garage. I wasn’t able to get his attention that day and hadn’t seen either of them outside much which was unusual. After a couple of months, I mentioned to my wife that I hadn’t seen Susie or Lavi working in their garden. Eventually I asked our next-door neighbor about them and she said that sometime over the winter Susie was admitted to a memory care facility. Apparently, she’d been struggling and was beginning to put both of them at some risk. Lavi couldn’t manage anymore and he needed help.

Eventually Lavi and I did connect. We saw each other outside and he waved me over one cool afternoon. He told me that Susie wasn’t living with him anymore. “She’s losing her memory. She’s in a facility and it’s my fault,” he said. He got emotional and I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I reluctantly reached out and gripped his shoulder. I didn’t know if that was going to be OK. He’s a stoic Norwegian Minnesotan and sometimes his generation of men pull back and retreat during moments like this, but he didn’t, so I just kept my hand there. Susie was the love of his life and he couldn’t take care of her anymore. They each had to give-up huge parts of themselves forever. I know what grief feels like, but I don’t know what that feels like and I don’t think emotional survival is guaranteed when that kind of loss happens. Lavi lived alone in their house for only a year, or so, after Susie left. He eventually sold it and moved into a small apartment for senior residents close to where we live. Occasionally we visited him while he lived there. When he saw our daughter and one of her friends, his eyes lit up. Sometimes when the girls were occupied with whatever activity or treats Lavi provided them, he would talk about Susie and his visits with her, and how she was growing more distant every day.

As our daughter got older and grew out of the doll house, it stayed on our front porch for a while before we passed it along to a young girl on our block who our daughter babysat for. After she grew out of it, they returned it to us, and we passed it on again to some new neighbors and their daughter. I think Lavi and Susie would have been happy knowing that what they created together still has a bright life. The house they lived in has had a couple of owners since they left too — it feels very different now, but if I concentrate, I can still picture them working methodically in their garden, or sunning on their deck, partially obscured by the huge hollyhocks and other large country flowers that gently swayed in the breeze between us.

For Susie and Lavi

Songs :: The Beginning of Memory by Laurie Anderson, It’s for You by Lyle Mays and Pat Metheny and Coral Room by Kate Bush